The BBC’s War and Peace: ‘Near the end I did worry, Oh God, have I ruined it?’

The latest TV adaptation has won almost universal praise – and director Tom Harper still can’t quite believe it. As the series comes to an end on Sunday night, he talks about the pressures of retelling a literary classic

Paul Dano as Pierre Bezukhov, far right, in the final episode of War and Peace.
Photograph: Laurie Sparham/BBC

It is a series that has attracted 7 million viewers and drawn praise from all quarters, with newspapers describing it as “a Sunday night jewel” and “a triumph”. Yet the young director of War and Peace, which reaches its concluding episode on Sunday, confesses to having been “very nervous” about how it would be received, and is still “amazed” that it has become such a talking point.

At an advance screening a few days ago, director Tom Harper, 36, who oversaw all six episodes, a cast of hundreds, loads of badly behaved hunting dogs, a bear, and nervy horses not accustomed to the smoke of battle, told the Observer: “You get so close to the work it’s very hard to look at it with any objectivity. Some of the reviews have been better than I ever hoped for.”

The penultimate instalment ended on a cliffhanger that saw key characters, post-battle, clinging to life, giving an early indication that many viewers may be left choking back tears come the finale. What is, perhaps, surprising is that Harper himself confessed that this final episode – which he has only recently helped to finish editing – also made him sad. As a father of two small boys, he said scenes between Prince Andrei and his young son were particularly hard to film. “It does get to me, it is relatable,” said Harper. “It’s a very difficult episode in some ways. It represents what life was like then.”

‘Reviews have been better than I ever hoped for’: director Tom Harper. Photograph: James Gourley/REX/Shutterstock

He will be watching it on Sunday at a special BBC gathering of the cast and production team but, in a nod to the mainstream audience here and in America, he has made sure that the final scenes contain some postwar comfort.

In person, Harper is possibly the least haughty, most grounded television director to stalk a set, which might partly explain his incredulity at the series becoming such a talking point. Last week’s episode sparked a debate about male nudity after scenes showing dozens of naked soldiers bathing in a lake. It led to the epithet, “phwoar and penis”. The reaction has arguably sent Harper’s profile soaring: he has never before helmed a drama that has become part of national conversation.

“The script said the men were bathing and it didn’t make sense for them to be in their clothes,” he said. “Being honest, I didn’t think about it a great deal at the time. I always want things to feel as natural as possible within the context of the scene.”

When War and Peace was launched at a glitzy event in Mayfair last December, the adapter, veteran Andrew Davies, was the centre of attention, but one of the leading topics at the party afterwards was the contrast: how young the spry director Harper looked.

Harper’s ascent to the top of a very greasy career pole follows a drama degree at Manchester University, a course that has produced many famous alumni, including Adrian Edmondson, who plays Count Rostov, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rik Mayall.

Harper was nominated for a Bafta in 2006 for Cubs, a short film about urban foxhunting in London’s Stroud Green. Since then his work has included E4’s Misfits, The Scouting Book for Boys, Shane Meadows’s acclaimed This Is England series, and the film War Book, which premiered at the 2014 London film festival.

He said that one of the few downsides of directing Leo Tolstoy’s epic – his first major costume drama – was being away for so long from his wife, Georgina, and their family. Much of the filming took place in Russia, Latvia and Lithuania. “It was very long and arduous.” He also confessed that he became increasingly nervous as filming progressed.

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“I feel very proud of it, I like watching it, [but] I have been frightened at points,” he said. “The time I was most fearful was approaching the end. I’d stop and think, ‘Oh God, have I ruined it for people?’ – all those who considered it a great story.” The challenge, he said, “was to keep a hold on the original way you see it”.

James Norton, who plays Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and falls in love with Natasha at the ball, became a firm friend during the intense months of filming in all weathers between January and July. Norton (who also plays the murderous psychopath Tommy Lee Royce in the second series of Happy Valley) spent last Saturday entertaining lively five-year-olds at Harper’s son’s birthday party at his Walthamstow home, dancing and organising games.

Another of the challenges of directing, Harper confessed, had been making sure Norton played against his natural amiable demeanour, and kept up the repressed, seemingly cold and bored ennui of a grand aristocrat. In episode one, he callously pushes his wife aside, who later dies during childbirth. “I had to keep telling him not to smile.”.

He said the character of Natasha, an immature teenager at the start of the series, baffled him, although things improved because Lily James “does lust very well” as she seeks her day in the sun and is almost seduced by the ghastly Anatole Kuragin (Callum Turner).

He is also proud to have picked American actor Paul Dano as Pierre Bezukhov, who, as a bonus, had studied literature. “Not many people in the world could play that role, it’s particularly hard,” he said.

So what next for the young director who has made such a mark on our screens this winter? “I like political film-making. A nice thriller,” he said. Not a costume drama? “Never say never.”